Finding Spirit in the Modern World

Card of the Day: Six of Stones (Exploitation)

This is a serious card – the Wildwood deck does tend to get to the point sometimes, whether the point be cozy and warm or cold and hard. As many of us are celebrating the fertility of spring (in the Northern Hem) and others celebrating the harvest (in the Southern Hem), but in this day we need to consider how these cycles are changing and whether it’s for the health of all – including future generations.

What are we doing that need to change to live our words? In our household, we struggle to reduce plastic use, not waste food, and to get busy with gardening in a timely manner. We all need to find better – and more sustainable – ways to live.

Sorry to be preachy, but sometimes it is what it is.

SIX OF STONES – EXPLOITATION

MEANING: Selfish or foolish overuse of non-sustainable resources implies imbalance in work and business that is damaging to yourself or the environment.

DESCRIPTION: Two ragged and distraught figures, and old man and a girl, stand by a row of damaged and abandoned beehives holding empty bowls. Broken and unused farming tools lie on the ground nearby. Through the leafless trees, we see the surrounding fields, barren and desolate. In the distance, smoke rises from burning piles of spoiled crops.

READING POINTS: The human race’s capacity to exploit planetary resources to our own detriment is motivated by a flawed belief that we have the right to do so. As we begin to come to terms with the profound effects of global climate change and the irreversible effects this will have on our children’s lives, the human race still struggles to deal with the unresolved issues of how to feed the billions of new human beings born every year. How we will resource the education, health, and social service requirements of entire generations to come seems like a question too painful even to think about. With world financial systems and safeguards breaking down and faith in any government’s ability to tell the truth and act with integrity severely damaged, our social moral codes and once-familiar cultural “norms” appear under enormous strain. We all need to be aware of the price our children will pay for our exploitation of the planet’s resources.

The Wildwood Tarot by authors Mark Ryan and John Matthews and artist Will Worthington